Charlotte

Age at interview: 42

Brief Outline:

When Charlotte was 10 years old, she sustained burns to her legs due to a petrol explosion. Charlotte was told that she would be in hospital for a week, but after specialists realised the extent of her injuries, she remained as an inpatient for three months.

Background:

Charlotte is 42 years old and lives in New Zealand with her husband and their three children. She works full-time as a website designer. Her ethnicity is White British.

More about me...

Charlotte was 10 years old when she sustained burns to both her legs after a petrol can exploded after it was poured on a pile of burning debris. She remembers her parents panicking and phoning for an ambulance, but because of the remote location where they lived, her parents decided it would be quicker to drive her to the hospital themselves. Charlotte didn’t receive any first-aid for her burns until she arrived at the hospital 20 minutes after the explosion, which she believes “made the burns worse”.

When Charlotte arrived at the hospital the doctors and nurses applied medical pouches of sterilised water to her burns, which she recalls being “the most amazing feeling”. Whilst the sterilised water was poured onto her burns Charlotte was sedated. Initially, Charlotte was told she would be able to go home after around ten days, but once burns specialists realised the extent of her injuries, she remained as an inpatient for three months.

Charlotte found her time as an inpatient incredibly challenging. Charlotte did not receive any pain relief, due to medical guidelines at the time, which she says made her experience “horrendous”. Whilst Charlotte was an inpatient, she underwent several skin grafts to replace the skin on her legs which had been burnt, and she also had scheduled dressing changes every few hours.

Charlotte believes it would have been beneficial for her to have met with other burn survivors whilst she was in hospital to “connect with and tell me it’s going to be ok”. In recent years, Charlotte has connected with a fellow burns survivor which she says was a “cathartic” experience which allowed her to talk about memories she had forgotten about.

When Charlotte was a teenager, she wished that she could fit in and be more like everyone else. However, as time has passed, she started to understand that everyone is unique and that their differences make them special. Charlotte now feels proud of her scars and will happily wear shorts in public, she thinks that doing this may help other people with scars feel less self-conscious because she doesn’t think that anyone should feel uncomfortable with themselves.

Since being burned Charlotte has at times struggled with her mental health. She has experienced periods of anxiety, which she takes medication for, and has been diagnosed with PTSD. When she was in her 30’s Charlotte decided she wanted to understand more about her trauma. She visited the doctor and attended counselling sessions for two years. Charlotte feels like she now understands her anxiety better and it does not overwhelm her as much.

Charlotte's advice to health care professionals is to listen to their patients to make sure they understand their concerns. She believes health care professionals should not make presumptions about their patients and to acknowledge that pain and fear are experienced differently by each person.

Charlotte found dressing changes to be very traumatic.

So, with the dressing changes, they would happen. As I said, they'd be every other day, but they'd come in and they bring the dressing trolley in the morning. At which point, you're already panicking. Like as soon as that trolley, like if I can still, like even now with all my, like there are things I can bring back to mind that can, but the trolley would come in and sit there for a while, and you knew then you're on borrowed time. And then it would be the removal of the bandages which was, I mean, just, I can't... there's no words. So, it's just horrendous which might take, I don't know. It felt like hours, but mostly that was an hour.

Charlotte had physiotherapy to learn to walk again.

Yes, there was a lot of physiotherapy, and so I had to learn to walk again, so because I’d been in bed for three months. You just suddenly get to a day where they're like okay we think, you know, we're going to get you on your feet, and that, I think, I still remember that day really clearly because it's like, it kind of moves around because you've still got your dressings on and stuff, and they kind of stand you up. But you've lost all, you think, from a child's perspective, it's like “Great, I’m just going to get up and I’m going to walk” and I mean, I was still bandaged as well, so the weight of the legs, it wasn't actually possible to walk. It was just, I think it's one step and then back on the bed. But obviously, that's all the challenges that come with that as well, so the pain of actually learning how to walk again. Physiotherapy came a little bit later so that was I think when the dressings were fully off again. And I remember not liking the physiotherapy because it's, yeah, it wasn't particularly nice.

Charlotte said wearing a pressure garment was “itchy” and “uncomfortable”.

Just itchy and un-comfy. So, they had kind of zips down the side so you have to kind of get them on, and then you zip them down the side, so they're really tight around your lower legs. And then I just remember like that would be so sore, where the zip was, they'd always be embedded and you like you'd want to itch it and you just didn't have the full range of, they're just, obviously they're just really tight. So just not particularly nice and they don't look very nice either, so just, I suppose, for that. Like it's not the worst thing again in the whole, but it's just another thing that gets added to it.

Yeah, so that I think it's a year for pressure garments. And you do really want to burn them, and they have to change them quite regularly and I suppose for me because I would have been growing at the same time. So, and I can't even tell you how often but what you'd have they come in quite often then you get re-measured and then you get new ones sent out. But then you couldn't. So they're kind of made a new, they're like stockings really where they haven't got a gusset in there, so you can't even, you don't take them off when you go to the toilet. They're just supposed to just, you know, you've got your underwear on top of them. So, it's just all of it. Not particularly nice.

Charlotte and her partner have conversations about their parenting approach, which includes thinking about risks and the importance of mental health within the family.

So definitely a lot more anxious. And because something that significant happened to me as a child, my worst-case scenario. You know, when you're younger, you just think, you know, there's nothing worse that can happen to me than to go through that burn again, you know. And then you have kids and you think, yes, it would be for my child to go through that. So yeah, so for me, it's just been trying to get their health, a healthier balance of trying to keep them protected, but also actually knowing that okay, what happened to me was awful, but it shouldn't affect the way my kids see the world. So that's, again, that's a work in progress. That's something that we, me and my partner, sort of talk about a lot, and it's just something that will keep re-correcting I think as we do it.

So probably in some ways it may have been good for us in parenting because it’s made us much more aware of mental health. So, it’s kind of like we know what we don’t want our kids to experience, but it’s also helped us to try and learn a little bit more about how things affect them. And... and, yeah, and what we need to do.

Charlotte experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after being burnt.

And then I got put through and then got help for the PTSD. And then they explained it to me, you know, this is post-traumatic. This is everything and then they started going through everything, and you realise how significant it was. I honestly didn't realise how significant the burns was at that stage. I mean, I knew it's a big thing, you know. I've been burned, but I still couldn't talk about it at that stage.

So, if I had that conversation with someone and they'd say, “Oh, have you been burned?” I’d try and talk about it and I’d end up, my hands would just be shaking. I couldn't talk about it, and I didn't realise then that this was not, this isn’t good. You know, this is all stuff that needed to be dealt with. So, on the other side of all that, a couple of years later, it's almost like I can just talk about it now, and I can think about it, but it's the images are flat. It's like looking at a book, and we can look at the pictures together. When I used to talk about it before, it was like going back there. And I could still smell things and feel things and it was like a-, you could, you'd go back to actually being in that thing and all that anxiety would come up, and it would be-, whereas now I’ve separated them all.

So, it's not to say I’m not going to get anxious. If, you know, I’m still anxious with fire. You know, I’m always going to be. That's like, you'll be unreasonable to think that, you know, it's not going to affect me. But I can understand it, so I can actually say oh, I’m feeling a bit anxious because of this or because of that. Whereas before it would just be overwhelming feelings of anxiety and I need to be safe and I need everyone around me to be safe, whereas now I’ve got a little bit more understanding, and can reason with myself about what's going on.

Charlotte views her empathy as a gift.

There's so much that you can use from it that's positive. So, you get so much more empathy for what people go through. You've experienced something, so you have so much, I’m trying to be so eloquent. How can I say it? I think, yeah, so it's having the empathy which is it's been a massive gift for me to actually be able to know and pick up on later. You can see when other people are upset or when other people are suffering, and I’ve definitely become more aware of that as an adult with what I’ve been through. But also, to have that understanding of how it can feel to be different is actually really good. It's actually really nice as an adult when you're actually having to connect with all different people. You can actually connect with so much more, you know. It's another depth. You have got more depth when you get older from having that experience that you can draw off. You know, just what you're capable of as well for having got through that you've got so much more. Like, you know what you can get through to it.

There's not much more that you can go through in life. That's going to be worse than that, and so once you're past that point, it's like, you know, life's going to be easy once you feel-, and it doesn't matter. Like nobody's perfect, and physical appearance is just so unimportant really because, you know, what's beautiful is actually what's inside as well. And it doesn't have to change anything. It doesn't have to be such a negative for your life. It actually can be once you're through the worst bit, it can actually be such a growth thing for you.

Charlotte used Facebook to chat to another person who had sustained a burn injury.

The person I’ve been talking to quite regularly, never met her, different ages, but yes. You know, I probably will at some stage, and I hope I’ve been helpful to her, and I know it's been helpful to me.

But I suppose there's still that... the connection there is very much around the burns, so they'll probably be... I don't know if... it's probably always going to be in its separate little box because the rest of my life, I try and get... keep it more, not in its place because that's the wrong thing, but it's when you come up., when you still talk about it even though I’m a lot more detached from it still takes emotional, it's emotional toll, you know, and it's still nice to be able to just be normal.

Burn survivors don't often talk to other burn survivors.  and I think the first person I talked about it too was, I don't know, in New Zealand, there was a volcano eruption here, White Island and there was quite a few people that were burnt quite badly on that. And then I ended up sort of getting in touch with one of the people from there, just because I think they put a picture up of their legs. And I’m like that is the same as my legs but seeing it again and I remember getting in touch then and just starting to talk about stuff then was really cathartic.